The Hashtag Inclusion
by SergeantFuzzyBoots
Summary: Penny finds a photo album of Leonard's childhood. One-shot in response to the Lenny Week prompt "Fluff".


**Lenny Week is currently happening on Tumblr, with the first day's prompt being "Fluff", so here's my contribution. Leonard and Penny have been so awesome on the show that the moments I come up with for them in fics suffer in comparison, but hopefully you all still enjoy this.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing.**

Leonard's eyes widened, mortified as he realized what book was in Penny's hands.

"Hey, no, no, no!" he protested, hurrying over to where she sat on the couch. He made a grab for the worn leather binding, but the Nebraskan, much quicker than he, held it out of his reach.

"Oh, come on!" Penny whined, clutching the book to her chest when her boyfriend persisted in his attempts to take it away. "I just started looking through it; I haven't even gotten to five year old Leonard yet." She gave him a small grin. "And you know I've always been very curious about what five year old you was like."

Leonard's eyes flickered between the book and the smile Penny was giving him, the conflicted emotions going through him showing clearly on his face. Finally he sighed, defeated. "Okay, go ahead."

Penny's grin widened and she scooted closer to him as she re-opened the photo album she'd found. The waitress had been surprised that a collection of pictures depicting Leonard's childhood existed; from what she knew of Beverly, she wouldn't have assumed the psychiatrist would be one for photographing her children.

The first two pictures were from ultrasounds, each captioned underneath with how far along Beverly was in gestation and the progress of Leonard's growth. The third photo was the first taken of Leonard as a newborn, wrapped in a blanket and nestled in the crib hospitals provided in recovery. His tiny eyes were closed, and his lips slighted parted. A small, clenched fist peeked out from under the blanket. The caption below read: "Leonard Leakey Hofstadter. Three hours old."

"Look at you," Penny sighed, the picture making her ridiculously happy. "You're so beautiful."

Leonard was rather unresponsive to her comment, merely giving a small shrug. The reaction confused Penny a little; she'd thought Leonard would be pleased knowing that his mother had taken pictures of him as a child. For a woman who showed minimal love and affection, this at least showed some caring on her part.

However, as Penny turned the page, she began to understand her boyfriend's lack of enthusiasm. The next pictures were dark and difficult to make out, but the captions made things blatantly clear. Beverly was employing the Ferber method with Leonard, detailing the results of letting her son "cry it out" each night.

The smile that had been left over from the newborn Leonard picture quickly faded away. Penny glanced to her left, but again, the experimental physicist said nothing.

Upon turning to the third page, Penny thought things were starting to get better again, with pictures showing Leonard playing with toys, mouth open wide in a happy grin; however, each caption offered negative perspectives from Beverly on whatever activity the infant Leonard was engaging in. It went on like this for a while as Leonard became a toddler and then slightly older. There was also a potty training page, but Penny barely saw it for Leonard snapped to attention at that moment and urgently flipped ahead until he deemed it once again safe.

When they reached his five year old years, Penny found that she'd been right in being curious about this age because it held her favourite picture yet. In one photo, Leonard was grinning up at the camera, the corners of his mouth pulled wide and his eyes squinting. His right arm was off to the side, pointing at something that hadn't been captured by the camera. The caption read: "Leonard Leakey Hofstadter. Age five. Points out a butterfly."

"Oh my God, you're adorable!" Penny exclaimed, leaning up against her boyfriend. Unfortunately, Beverly hadn't thought so, for the description went on to explain Leonard's annoying habit of pointing out the obvious and how it was "maddening".

The pages continued in this fashion, though none of the pictures showed Leonard as happy as he'd been in the butterfly picture. Penny began simply ignoring the captions as they ruined the nicer photos of Leonard – although those eventually became scarce as the pictures depicted events such as scraping his knee after trying to ride a bike, or having chicken pox.

The last photograph that showed Leonard looking genuinely happy was one of him and a chocolate Labrador puppy. He and the dog had matching smiles as the two played in the grass. Penny couldn't help but read the caption, as this one was hard to ignore. It read: "Leonard has grown very attached to the animal. He has given her the name 'Mitzy'." Whatever else Beverly had had to say about her son and his puppy was unknown to the waitress, as someone had taken a permanent marker and furiously scribbled overtop of the rest of the writing.

Penny slowly closed the album shut, not wanting to go any further. She turned to face Leonard who shrugged again. "Sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have looked through it."

He gave her a small smile. "It's okay. I actually like a lot of the pictures in there, it's just ..."

"The captions," Penny agreed, squeezing his arm. "Do you mind if I keep the butterfly picture?" she asked after a moment. "I think it's adorable."

Leonard's grin got a little bigger. "Sure."

"Great," Penny said. "It'll be a nice intro picture for your new photo album!"

"What?" he asked, looking perplexed as Penny reached for her phone on the coffee table. "No, you really don't have to," he protested when he realized she was trying to take a picture of him.

As he expected, Penny ignored him, planting her lips firmly on his cheek to get him to smile before taking the picture of the two of them.

"I'll even caption it for you," Penny said, as she grinned at the picture that was now on her phone. "Check Twitter," she instructed a minute later after her fingers had finished tapping and swiping at the screen.

Leonard obeyed, pulling out his own phone and pressing the blue and white coloured app. He smiled when he saw Penny's latest tweet, accompanied by a link to the new photo, "#MyFavouritePersonInTheWorld Best boyfriend ever! dr_leonardhofstadter".

When he looked up, Penny had a mischievous grin on her face. He smiled back at her. "I like the inclusion of the hashtag."

"I thought you might."

Their smiles didn't fade as they leaned forward and met in the middle, happy expressions persisting as they kissed. Leonard didn't pull back too far when their lips parted, merely moving his head down to rest again her shoulder. Penny tipped her head to rest against his. Leonard figured she must have closed her eyes because she made a sound of surprise when the click that signalled his phone had taken a picture was heard.

Penny raised an amused eyebrow at him as Leonard sat up, adding his own tweet to their new online photo album, complete with the appropriate hashtag.


End file.
